Timeliner XE is so much more than making timelines! The new features that allow students to safely research online has added a whole new dimension to this program.
I was privileged to work with a group of second grade Target students at Baker Elementary School this week. The teacher asked if I could model a lesson in Timeliner on the History of Money. Well Timeliner XE has hundreds of precreated lessons and activities but there wasn't one to meet the criteria for this lesson. So off I went to create my own. Needless to say there were some problem solving issues. Like...once I have the activity created how would the students get the template. What about images. I can't have students all over the Internet looking for pictures. So I sat, contemplated and finally created my lesson. AND it was successful! Below are the steps I took.
- Within Timeliner XE I was able to create my on research activity for the students. This was much easier then I ever imagined. To do this open Timeliner XE. Select "Choose and Activity" and then on the bottom select the button called "Create and Activity". A new window will open. Select "Research Activity" then next.
- Type in the lesson title and directions. You will also see an area where you put the website links you want the students to use for research. Click next when complete.
- Research links - I used Nettrekker to search for appropriate websites the students could use to find the information needed. To do this I had the Internet opened at the same time as timeliner and I toggled back and forth coping and pasting the websites I needed.
- Once this is done then your activity is completed! I saved it to my desktop in a folder labeled History of Money.
- I also wanted to students to have some images that they could use. I first checked in the safe free image sites but could not find what I needed. I decided to go out further and look but most of the places I found would not work for the students. I decided to save the images I found in a folder called Money images. This folder was saved in my History of Money folder.
- Something extra - As an activating activity I showed the students a video from United Streaming on the History of Money. I downloaded this video and saved it in the History of Money folder.
Now I needed the students to have access to this activity. I now have one folder called History of Money. Once I got to Baker I used my flash drive to move the folder to the teacher's computer and saved it to the Studrive (U-drive). This gives the students access to the folder.
Students opened Timeliner XE and selected "Choose and Activity" then they selected "My activities". A window will open where the students could then select the studrive (U-drive) and open the activity I made. Once they opened the activity I had them immediately click File-->Save as-->they named the file History of Money and then saved. This put the activity in their student folder.
Now we were good to go! They had the activity and when they were ready to add images they were able to navigate to the studrive (U-drive) to the image folder I created.
These seem like a lot of steps but the entire process was very quick. I took me less then 30 minutes to make the research activity. The time was spent on finding the websites appropriate for 2nd graders. The students had no problems opening the activity and following my directions on saving and then navigating back to get images. This was second graders! They did a great job! Technology was being used in an educational way that supported learning and engaged the students.
Tip: If you are using the student laptops then have the students turn on the computers and click on Timeliner XE. This seems to take quite a while. I would then move students away from the computer and do your activating activity. This process took the longest. However, once Timeliner XE opened everything moved quickly without any problems.
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